Friday

Last week, Marlborough Hills Administrator Ron Doty got an email confirming receipt of a $25,000 wire transfer to a company called Orig3n Incorporated.

The transfer secured 250 COVID-19 tests that Doty needed to cover every employee at the rehab and health care center. The kits arrived the next day.

As staff at Marlborough Hills Rehabilitation & Health Care Center administer the tests, the swabs are packaged up and sent back to the Boston-based lab, which will analyze them and return the results.

Doty is one of many long-term care facility administrators scrambling to test 90% of residents and staff for COVID-19 by May 25 in order to qualify for some of the $130 million in state funds Gov. Charlie Baker allocated to support individual nursing facilities on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Baker announced the emergency funding on April 27.

Nursing homes in the region seem likely to meet the May 25 testing deadline despite reported shortages of coronavirus tests.

Before Doty learned about Orig3n Incorporated, the lab that Marlborough Hills typically works with was sending the facility 10 COVID-19 tests at a time in an effort to ration low inventory.

Doty said he was saving those tests for residents, who are more vulnerable to the coronavirus because of age and underlying health conditions. He said staff members who should be tested were advised to instead contact their primary care physicians.

But nursing home residents aren’t the only people vulnerable to the virus.

Last week, in addition to the 21 Marlborough Hills residents who have died after contracting the virus as of May 15, Cindy Locklear, a licensed practical nurse who had been caring for residents, died from the infectious disease. Locklear’s daughter told The Boston Globe that Marlborough Hills didn’t have enough protective equipment for its workers.

Her death emphasizes the importance of ensuring health care workers, who risk their lives caring for patients and residents in the state’s roughly 1,000 long-term care facilities, also have access to the testing and treatment they need.

A spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health said the number of facilities that have completed the testing requirement will not be available until after the May 25 deadline, but the state’s support for long-term care facilities has been strong.

“This program is a national model that, to date, has provided more than 45,000 tests in nursing homes, rest homes, assisted living residences and other congregate care settings,” the DPH spokesperson said in an email.

Two weeks after Massachusetts instituted the May 25 deadline, Vice President Mike Pence recommended governors nationwide test all residents and staff of nursing homes, according to the Associated Press.

Following the recommendation, states — including New York, Texas, Nebraska and South Dakota — enacted mass testing requirements for nursing facilities.

Baker’s emergency funding package is the latest round of state support for long-term care facilities, which accounted for more than 60% of total COVID-19-related deaths in Massachusetts as of May 19.

His administration has provided upwards of $260 million in dedicated nursing home funding since this crisis began.

The latest funding program was billed as an incentive-based plan, but baseline testing is mandatory for the 395 nursing facilities enrolled in the government-funded MassHealth network, the name for the state’s Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance programs.

State data released Tuesday showed 292 of 344 long-term care facilities reporting COVID-19 cases are providers in the MassHealth network. Nearly 60% of facilities that accept MassHealth have reported more than 30 coronavirus cases, as of May 19.

State auditors guided by an infection control checklist will score each facility to determine how much funding each facility receives after baseline testing is completed, according to the COVID-19 Nursing Facility Accountability and Support document on the DPH website.

Funds distributed through the program must be used for staffing costs, infection controls, personal protective equipment or direct staff support.

Most, if not all, of the $25,000 Doty spent acquiring tests for Marlborough Hills will be reimbursed as part of Baker’s emergency funding package.

Nursing homes on track to meet deadline

Doty had never heard of Orig3n Incorporated, the company providing COVID-19 tests to Marlborough Hills, until Mass Senior Care Association included the laboratory company in a May 6 memo to members.

According to a state spokesperson, the Executive Office of Health and Human Services has worked closely with the Mass Senior Care Association to ensure skilled-nursing and long-term care facilities can access the tests they need to meet the deadline.

Several skilled-nursing and long-term care facilities in the MassHealth network told the Daily News they have already achieved baseline testing, including Bethany Health Care Center in Framingham, where 10 residents died after contracting the coronavirus as of May 19.

Briarwood Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center and North Hill’s Pines Edge Skilled Nursing Facility in Needham have also met the baseline testing requirement, a spokesperson hired by the facilities said on May 8.

A spokesperson for Wingate Healthcare said all of the company's facilities in the state, including 10 that have reported cases of COVID-19, expect to meet the universal testing deadline, "as long as the test kits continue to be made fully available."

Most facilities, including Wingate, said National Guard testing allowed them to complete baseline testing, but Doty said the turnkey testing service offered by Orig3n was the only avenue that would have worked for Marlborough Hills.

In a MassHealth FAQ last updated on May 19, nursing homes were given a few methods to complete baseline testing.

The first was to contact Emergency Medical Services providers that offer testing. Doty said the ambulance companies would require staff to provide an insurance card in order to be tested, ruling it out as an option for Marlborough Hills.

“Not every one of our employees may have an insurance card, so I don't want that to be an obstacle to hitting the 90% threshold by May 25,” Doty said. “I've got folks working for me, honestly, where English is a second or third language. I just need a test kit. We just need to get them tested.”

Another option provided in the FAQ was to call the National Guard, which has been assisting nursing homes across the state with coronavirus testing - and medical care - for weeks. That option wouldn’t have worked for Marlborough Hills, either, Doty said.

In a May 6 memo to members, Mass Senior Care said all staff must be present for the National Guard visit, as the troops would not conduct testing in stages, such as separate work shifts.

Doty said it wouldn’t be possible to get all of Marlborough Hills’ 250 employees on site during what would likely be a few-hour window.

“We have employees who work other jobs, who have other obligations, who may be providing care for somebody, a child or an elderly person, in their home,” Doty said. “It's not that easy to say to 250 people, ‘Be here Monday between nine and one.’ It isn't going to happen. I didn't want to put all my eggs in that basket and have us come up short.”

Orig3n Incorporated’s services listed in both Mass Senior Care’s memo and the MassHealth FAQ, was a saving grace for Marlborough Hills administrators sprinting to meet the May 25 testing deadline, Doty said.

“I would not have been able to hit that threshold by that day,” he said.

But with the tests from Orig3n, Doty expects to wrap up staff testing by next week. From there, he and nursing home administrators across the state will have to cover the shifts of staff members who will need time off after testing positive.